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Momma, Don’t Let Your
Babies be Tech Writers

By Karen Wormald

I was obviously
overdosing on Oprah’s mantra to “follow your passion” when I decided it was time
to write for a living by leaping from a comfortable management job into
technical writing.

When I used to
moonlight as a freelance writer in the innocent ‘80s, the first thing I ever had
published was a book. I placed it without an agent after querying only 11
publishers. When I recall that fluke now, I see myself as the coyote in a "Road Runner" cartoon, sailing off a cliff through the air until I looked
down, realized I couldn’t fly, and took a plunge. I’ve been writing magazine
articles and unpublished novels ever since.

To break into
technical writing, I compiled a résumé listing everything I’d ever written, no
matter how irrelevant, and sent it to every technical contract agency in town
because so-called permanent positions never appeared in the classifieds.

It took three
months to get my first nibble. This agency was so eager to pair me with its
client, they met me for the first time in the client’s lobby right before my
interview. So much for careful screening.

The client hired
me, and I quickly learned that companies will pay exorbitant hourly rates to
contract agencies (not to writers) for the luxury of having disposable human
resources.

Fortunately, this
first gig was with a large permanent staff of technical writers who took it so
seriously, they had regular meetings to debate things like capitalization.
Shelley was their leader, and she tucked me safely under her wing to show me how
to write technically. I had no idea there was so much to it.

I owe Shelley and
her gang big-time for everything I learned, and I like to think my innocent
questions made them remember how far technical writing had pulled them from
creative writing, which was a first love for most of them.

Many technical
writers dabble in “real” writing on the side, with a drawer full of short
stories to prove it. However, I’ve found that anyone who can hold a pencil
thinks he can call himself a technical writer. It certainly explains all the
nonsensical DVD manuals.

But what makes
technical writing so different and separates those writers from the rest of us?

First, technical
writing doesn’t have to be interesting-- not even a little bit. In fact, if a
plot emerges, there’s something wrong.

It’s no place for
personality or style. It’s declarative tone all the way. Question marks are
forbidden. Humor falls on deaf eyeballs. If you take any pride in your writing,
you can just park your ego under the keyboard and leave it there.

The progression of
ideas must always be linear. Leaps of logic and flights of fancy are not
tolerated.

Forget about
elegant variation. You’d better call a widget a widget every time, even if it
qualifies as a “part,” a “device,” or a “component.” This makes the writing
absurdly redundant, but that’s a good thing: “Insert the widget into the widget
socket where the widget base meets the widget connector.”

You must remember
that pronouns are not your friends. Your reader needs to be able to tell if “Use
them to affix it to the wall” means to use the nails to hang the picture, or the
screws to hang the shelf.

Omit commas at your
own risk. The AP Stylebook may say the word “and” is as good as a comma
between the last two items in a series. In technical writing, dropping that
comma could result in death: “The three color-coded batteries that discharge a
lethal level of voltage if handled are black and white, blue and yellow and
red.”

Forget your
audience-- you don’t have one. I spent whole years on single projects for
companies regulated by the FDA, only to find out they wanted a manual just to
show the FDA it existed if there was ever an inspection. Otherwise, no one read
my work, not even to see if it was complete or correct. I could have filled a
binder with blank paper and become a master at PC solitaire, or inserted my
Great American Novel as a ticking bomb set to explode in the FDA’s face.

If you have the
stomach for it, technical writing can be the path to a full-time writing career.
I did it for three years before switching to general business writing, which
offers more variety. If you decide to go technical, be sure to keep reading the
work of authors you admire so your day job doesn’t make you forget everything
you ever knew about “real” writing.

Karen Wormald
offers freelance business writing services through Kew Publications. She’s a
contributing editor to Office Solutions and PC Solutions Magazine, and her work
has appeared in numerous others. In case you’re curious, that book she had
published was Mastering English Skills for Word Processing. You can
contact her at
kewpubs@aol.com.